This split has been widening for some time, and now it seems to be an open breach. Some see it as a deliberate tactic, an inspired way to highlight the supposed "normalization" and "de-demonizatiion" of the party under the daughter's leadership. That's too cleverly Machiavellian by half, in my view. It's rather King Lear in Saint-Cloud: the aging Le Pen foolishly passed the kingdom to Goneril and is now suffering the consequences of her ambitions. Unlike Lear, however, Jean-Marie deserves his comeuppance. And his Cordelia (Marion Maréchal-Le Pen) is hardly a model of feminine virtue.

More rapidly than expected, the UMP has adopted rules governing its presidential primary, to be held next year. Stealing a leaf from the Socialists, the party hopes to stimulate interest in its candidacy and hone its message by staging this "event" well before the presidential election, ensuring that it will receive its share of media attention. The eligibility requirements are surprisingly open: to vote in the UMP primary, one simply has to declare an interest in l'alternance (and who doesn't want to throw the bums out) and pay €2, a sum small enough not to deter anyone.

This naturally raises the question of whether Sarkozy, by agreeing to this arrangement, has not signed his own death warrant. All polls suggest that while he remains extremely popular with the hard core of the UMP base, he is much less popular in the country at large and might well lose to Alain Juppé if enough voters are willing to cross party lines to vote in the UMP race. And even if Juppé falters--his strength at the moment reflects name recognition as much as anything else, and he is not an especially good campaigner--there are other ambitieux waiting in the wings, most notably Bruno Le Maire but also NKM, Xavier Bertrand, and possibly others, depending on how things evolve. So the situation is tricky for Sarkozy, and it will be interesting to see how he handles it.

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I have been a student and observer of French politics since 1968. In that time I've translated more than 130 books from the French, including Tocqueville's Democracy in America and Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century. I chair the seminar for visiting scholars at Harvard's Center for European Studies and am a member of the editorial board of French Politics, Culture, and Society and of The Tocqueville Review/La revue Tocqueville. You can read some of my writing on French politics and history here and a short bio here. From time to time I will include posts by other students of France and French politics (accessible via the index link "guest"). My hope is that this site will become a gathering place for all who are interested in discussing and analyzing political life in France. You can keep track of posts on Twitter by following "artgoldhammer".